Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.